Beginning is standard - a space ship carrying some forty passengers, and presumably some cargo, is hit by a cluster of rock fragments (occurrence that is not against the odds, but one would think that the future generations would have thought some device to prevent it), and crashes on a distant planet. Only a few of the passengers survive. The planet they land is dead (or so they think), circling around three stars (sic!). They stumble upon a deserted camp, from which a crew of explorers have fled (or have they?). So the shelter and water are provided, and a bonus is a ship that just needs some batteries and than they are on their way home. But wait, something evil in the dark lurks! So, they will just have to stay in the open, where three suns are sure to provide for the light. Alas, no! The cruel nature, the same one that have on the world with the three suns provided a dangerous life form that appears only in the dark, have provided for those same three suns to arrange themselves as to provide for (have you guessed already?) pitch black night every once in a while, e.g., every 22 years.

Once again it is shown that you do not need an original idea, or original characters to make a good and griping movie. McGuffin, as old master Hitchcock have explained to those who would listen and learn, is just an excuse to get the movie and action going, not a reason d'être of the movie. Once you get your McGuffin introduced you do not spend time explaining it or dwelling about it, you deal with your characters. The main thing is to use your characters and use their emotions (using the spectator's emotions at the same time), fears particularly, and concentrate on the action itself and not on the reason for the action. But you have to be in control of your characters and in control of the action, otherwise there is nothing to watch, or nothing to make a movie about. David Twohy has missed some lectures on this last one. His characters are somewhat lacking in real action and are not behaving like any normal person would do. In fact some of them, for some of the time, are behaving as they are rehearsing particularly dull play, expecting to receive a new script any time now, so they do not want to waste their time on the one they think is going to the showers.

But even so, this one is fun to watch. At last the humans have come to the lair from which the Thing has come. The same Thing that have long ago crashed on the Earth, digging itself in the deep ice of the Antarctica, and when found and brought to life, brought havoc all around. First in the Howard Hawks' 1951 "The Thing (From Another World)", then in John Carpenter's 1982 "The Thing". In this later one Kurt Russell (MacReady, and is he ready or is he ready) and Keith David (as Childs in his first credited film debut) have finally exterminated it. Or have they? Well, we have never found out at the end of John Carpenter's "The Thing". And now, Keith David meets the Thing's Mama and its numerous children! Or maybe it is one of his descendants and one of Mama's descendant, whatever. And maybe this is not a home planet of the Thing, but just another one it has crashed into and developed into some Thing variant. It does not matter. What matter is that once again, after 18 years, we have a pleasure to watch Keith David et all find a way to send the Thing(s) to meet its maker. And the Thing is not alone, it was fruitful and had multiplied and multiplied.

And what a nice bunch of et al they are! First we have Fry (Radha Mitchell), the only survived crew member. She is a pilot and she had tried to ditch the passenger's cargo area to save her own life during the crash landing. The Captain who have died in the crash landing stopped her. She is also, or purports to be, a descendant (or ascendant, as the time and space are relative) of Alien's favorite playmate and Mama, Sigourney "Ripley" Weaver. She is tough, she is good looking, and she has lot to learn in the monster disposal business. She has lot to learn in the acting business, but who cares.

Next we have proverbial black sheep, escaped convict Riddick (Vin Diesel), on board with his catcher Johns (Cole Hauser). He is convicted murderer with infrared lenses for eyes. Good for the dungeons he escaped from, and pretty good asset when one has to fight the monsters that dwells in the dark. Hurrah for him, and hurrah for survivors to have him on board! He is tough and have no morals at all. Or has he? His Dr. Jekyll alter-ego, marshal Johns is there also. He is a good guy, or is he? We'll have to wait and see.

There are also some "first victims" and some extravagant characters to complete the milieu, and of course there is Imam, religious leader on his way to Mecca. This is of course the notorious Thing Killer descendant, Keith David himself. Yes, yes, yes!! But alas, no, no, no! At the end of the day, you got to ask yourself one question (and not the Do you feel lucky! question) and that is - what on earth Keith David is doing there? He certainly isn't doing much. So he is just a homage to the real Thing, maybe? Who knows? He has certainly given up his action mode and supplemented it with the God. And he is pretty shy about it, juts a few words throughout the movie. Pity, but it was good to see him again, even if pretty soon it was obvious that he's just a stowaway in this film. Maybe he is indignant because the Thing have devolved, lost its intelligence and morphing capabilities and became just another dull eat-everything-you-see cliche monster.

If in making "The Arrival", (1996), Twohy have entangled us in the realistic plot, real Sci-Fi and some "save the planet" thinkering, and have made a good and strong characters, with "Pitch Black" he stepped into a territory that requires a good knowledge of the genre, sense for timing and above all does not travel well with ideas of grandeur and self-importance. However, if compared with the films of the last decade of the Twentieth century (to which it belongs in spite of the President Clinton declaring that by due democratic process century has only 99 years) it is surely in the top drawer of it's genre. That, by itself, has a lot to say about general quality of the Hollywood movies in the past decade.